


hungry like the wolf

by princegrantaire



Category: DCU (Comics), Doctor Fate (Comics), Lobo (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comic: The Book of Fate (DCU 1997), First Kiss, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: Jared closes his eyes against a barrage of neon and lets his head rest limply on the cold leather of Lobo’s jacket, shielded from the dust the bike’s kicking up in its fast-track to– some place or other. Details are woozy and shifting. This week-long bender, with its undefined beginning and end, has rendered every planet an island with nothing in sight but the endless sky for company.
Relationships: Jared Stevens/Lobo
Kudos: 3





	hungry like the wolf

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place in the middle of the book of fate #12 during the lobo & jared adventure. You Know Something Happened. Authorial Intent Is That Something Happened Between Them.

Jared closes his eyes against a barrage of neon and lets his head rest limply on the cold leather of Lobo’s jacket, shielded from the dust the bike’s kicking up in its fast-track to– some place or other. Details are woozy and shifting. This week-long bender, with its undefined beginning and end, has rendered every planet an island with nothing in sight but the endless sky for company.

It’s the certainty that he’s gonna puke that might’ve kept Jared from hearing what Lobo had mumbled as they’d landed on this speck of sand stained by a dozen _NO VACANCY_ signs in languages approaching various degrees of familiarity, voice half-gone with drinks and too many cigars and shouting matches with disapproving bartenders across the galaxy. He’s felt the vibration of it, Lobo’s low tone that’s never strayed far from dangerous, as he’d clung tight but there’s little to be discerned from that. Jared shrugs vaguely, helpless to the jolt of every sharp turn.

He’s not hungover. To declare himself hungover, Jared thinks, would carry the implication of an… _over_. He’s not thought this through. It’s just a lull in the drinking, that’s what he’s going for here. Five hours of unwilling sobriety have got him heading for a mother of a sensory meltdown but it’s nothing Jared hasn’t lived through before and he’s found out he can live through a whole lot lately. He’d just like to– avoid it, step carefully around it, catch a couple hours of sleep and jump right back into the fray. Goodbye thoughts of exile and a lacklustre life left behind, thanks but no thanks.

Grief is a luxury Jared’s in no position to afford, lest he lose all of himself in the shipwreck of mourning, so he’s perfectly content to drown it out and happy to have found a kindred spirit in Lobo. Happier still, though it goes without saying, if they’re heading somewhere in possession of beds.

As the bike – _it’s called a fraggin’ Spacehog_ , Lobo would say – comes to a screeching halt, Jared risks lifting his head just to blink blearily at what may only pass for a motel on the bleakest and blackest of dark nights. In the cold light of morning, it’s a roadside horror of a two-story building with a couple smashed windows and a sort of rocket sticking outta the roof.

“That your work?” Jared asks, nodding up.

“Y’know what?” Lobo starts, disentangling himself from Jared just to hop on the ground with a thud, “I can’t remember but they gotta know th’ main man ‘round these parts.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable point, all things considered.

Jared follows Lobo to the door, squints at a hastily scrawled sign stuck to the front door and finds that he’s gained no newfound understanding of alien dialects in the past hour. The ankh-vision refuses to cooperate, as it’s done for days now, and Jared accepts his right eye to be as useless as his left – which is to say: unable to provide answers.

He sways when he enters and misses the doorway by an inch as he tries to lean against it. Failing to crash to the floor, Jared makes to account for witnesses but the receptionist, intimidatingly foreign in appearance and sporting more than a few tentacles, pays him no mind. It’s good that he’s found Lobo to stick to, Jared thinks, not for the first time since the night he’d wept on his shoulder to the tune of the _perfect balance ain’t so fun_ blues. Lobo’s easy to talk to and, as far as Jared’s concerned, easy on the eyes, too. There’s a novelty to it, the whole space outlaw shtick, though he misses Arnold and Vera and the routine of–

“Yer thinkin’ again, ain’tcha?” Lobo says, poking insistently at Jared’s forehead with one finger. There’s a keycard in his other hand, no doubt the answer to any hopes and dreams of horizonal surfaces. Beds, even. Jared quietly rejoices, his back’s already protesting from the long ride here.

“Well, if we hadn’t stopped drinkin’ –”

“I’ve been at it for weeks, man, I’m crashin’ real hard. So are you, th’ main man can tell.” There’s something to Lobo’s smile, all teeth, that gets Jared’s heart going a mile a minute. “C’mon, pup, I’ve got ways to cheer ya up.”

—

Lobo says things like that. _Pup_. The first time, Jared had flushed through no fault of his own, hazy with drinks that’d hit harder than anything he’d ever had back home and the sheer immensity of Lobo’s presence. Now, faintly accustomed to the shock of it, Jared’s found himself in the upstairs corridor of this dubious establishment, where something’s happily skittering in the walls and that room of theirs rests at the end of the hall.

“This is it, Jared, m’ man,” Lobo declares, struggling through an impulse to kick the door open before he settles on the wonders of the keycard.

It’s– a room. That’s for sure. Jared scratches at his long-dubbed _fucked up_ arm and steps inside, tries hard to make sense of the single bed that strikes him unlikely to support Lobo’s weight and the slight aroma of mold. Alien mold, that is. “Whoa,” he breathes out, “’s just like my old place.”

He’s a little more awake, just now, caught up in an unadvisable brand of nostalgia, and startles hard when the door slams shut. “Jesus, didn’t think I’d be missin’ that apartment I was, uh, borrowin’ right above a freakin’ porn theatre.”

“It takes some gettin’ used to,” Lobo admits and it’s then Jared realises he’s being backed into a wall with the main man’s increasing proximity. Now that’s a thought. This close, and with all the caveats of too sharp canines and the red of eyes narrowed to slits, Lobo smells like stale sweat and cigarette smoke, surely not unlike Jared himself. In present circumstances, it’s almost pleasant. “How’s about it, pup?”

There it is again.

Jared snorts and hopes it covers up the rush of the contact, the closeness he hadn’t even realised he’s been craving since before Switzerland and the stint in prison. Oh, _god_ , he wants this. “Ah, what the hell? Let’s go for it, big guy,” he says, an edge to his voice that might betray the tint of desperation.

As Lobo leans in, smiling that shark-like smile of his, it takes Jared a moment to understand he’s being kissed. He’s asked for it, that much he’s aware of, but with his senses gone haywire and the way Lobo’s already got a rough hand cupping his bony ass, his mind insists he’s being attacked. _Lobo means wolf_ , he thinks, hysterical, and gets nowhere with it, feeling not unlike cornered prey.

The thing is Lobo kisses like he’s starving for it, fierce and almost tearing Jared’s bottom lip open with the force of a bite. He must make a sound, a gasp or a groan, because next thing he knows the sting of it is being soothed with a lick and Jared’s mind catches up to the occasion. He kisses back then, pushing himself up in a feat of unparalleled gymnastics to wrap his legs around Lobo’s waist, though the motion gets his back aching again and the delicate constitution of a stomach that has partaken in too much drink and no food to go along with it sinking like he’s on a rollercoaster.

“‘m not gonna puke on you,” Jared mumbles against Lobo’s lips when he pulls back to breathe, arms coming to rest around his shoulders.

Lobo laughs, good and loud, and exclaims _Awright!_ like it’s a victory. It’s easier than expected. As he dives back in for another frenzied kiss, Jared thinks he’s allowed a respite from the world.


End file.
